With the continuous improvement of living standards and the unbalanced dietary structure in people's everyday life, excessive finely processed food is consumed and intake of vegetables and fruits are reduced. Meanwhile, exercise is inadequate. Accordingly, the incidence of hyperlipidemia increases year by year. In the recent years, the incidence of atherosclerosis, coronary heart disease, myocardial infarction, hypertension and other cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases induced by hyperlipidemia increases year by year, with the morbidity thereof ranking the first place in the total morbidity, which severely jeopardizes the health of human beings. Globally, about 12 million people die of cardiovascular diseases and cerebral stroke every year, and the main cause of coronary heart disease, hypertension and cerebrovascular diseases is atherosclerosis induced by hyperlipidemia.
Hyperlipidemia is a systemic disease, and is referred to as dyslipidemia in the modern medicine. It can be not only caused by genetic and environmental factors, especially improper diet, but also induced by diseases such as diabetes, obesity, and diseases of liver, gallbladder and kidney, etc. Currently, the hypolipidemic ways are mainly (1) rationally adjusting the diet, (2) enhancing the physical exercises, (3) proper physiotherapy including plasma purification therapy, and (4) pharmacotherapy.
Currently, there are mainly four categories of lipid-lowering drugs for treating hyperlipidemia, i.e., statins, fibrates, bile acid sequesterants and nicotinates. The patients need to rationally select hypolipidemic drugs according to different conditions for treatment. However, the majority of synthetic drugs is based on single target mechanism, and is difficult to achieve satisfactory efficacies on modern diseases with complicated etiology such as hyperlipidemia. However, related clinical reports indicate that long-term usage of statins and other chemical hypolipidemic drugs will produce adverse reactions. Therefore, the research and development of novel hypolipidemic drugs have significant social and economical benefits.